Hey gang, it’s me, Dr. Steve, and as you may have guessed, the biggest names in the pharmaceutical industry are raking in insane amounts of money more than ever. In the first quarter of 2024, get this: the top 20 drug makers all saw increases in profits. All 20! And many are linked to the demand for weight loss medication.

But did you know that we could stick it to big pharma and regain our youthful bodies at the same time? It’s true! Stick around to get the same directions I took to restore my health when I recently lost 60 pounds. The surge in market value for these companies should make you stop and pause. Drugs like Ozempic, that big names promote (no pun intended there, by the way, see if you caught that), might cause people to lose weight temporarily, but think about it: do we really want to rely on big pharma for that? Do we really want to put our health in the hands of those who are in cahoots with some of the most corrupt folks in our government? I think I can speak for all of us when I say no freaking way!

So what can we do? Well, you can do what I did when I lost over 60 pounds naturally and have kept the weight off now for over a year. You can talk to my good friend and sponsor, Dr. Ashley Lucas, who’s here today to give you the insider details of how to ditch the drugs and get back to true health. She’s a doctor and dietitian behind PHD Weight Loss, what I used to lose 60 pounds. Together, we’re hosting a free weight loss webinar just for Turley Talks listeners like you. You can register for that by clicking on the link below. So, Dr. Ashley, welcome, great to see you again.

Great to see you, thanks for having me here.

Oh, it’s my honor. So, I mean, this weight loss shot craze makes me picture big tech pharma guys with the cartoon dollar signs in their eyes, right? When I heard about this, you were the first person I thought of. I’ve been waiting to chat with you on this and get your take on this new alliance (I don’t even know how new it is) between big pharma and weight loss. So have at it, what do you think about all this?

You put it so nicely and exactly how I think it’s going. You know, big pharma is pushing these drugs so hard. They’re pushing it not just on us adults but on kids, which I just think is terrible. I always thought big pharma and medical associations were in it together, but now it is just so clear. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ first line of defense for obesity for kids 12 and older are these drugs, these injectables, which I just think is insane. They’re testing it on kids as young as six years old. We have not been taught how to eat to lose weight, and so we have lost hope and have been disempowered. Now they create this drug that seems to help in some ways. It does, but we have to be on the drug forever, and it has a scary side effect profile. It’s very expensive, and I think it’s such a wise business plan for the government to tell us this drug, this expensive drug, is something that we have to be on forever. Very wise when we look at it from that perspective.

Yeah, I know from my work with PHD Weight Loss, this is about so much more than just taking a pill. Can you give us a sense of what are some of the misconceptions about natural weight loss that drive people to actually seek out these big pharma needs?

We think that it’s painful, and we’ve been told all the wrong things, so it has been a painful experience. We’re told that we just need to eat less, we need to move more, we think we need to eat vegan or vegetarian rabbit food, we need to starve ourselves, we need to exercise like crazy, and it’s just not the truth. So here we haven’t been told the truth around nutrition, we think that it’s our fault, and we think that there’s no hope, so we go to these quick fixes, these drugs. When really, you can do all of this naturally without any of it. You can quiet the food noise, you can quiet the food chatter without these expensive drugs that have these scary side effect profiles.

You know, actually, I was talking about this on Instagram, and some lady was like, “You know, I really feel like I need these drugs because I’ve got this food chatter, this food noise.” I was like, “Listen, do exactly what I tell you to do for a week, and it will go away.” And it did, and it blew her mind. So, I just want anyone listening to this to know that there is hope, and you can do this without depending on big pharma if you want to.

It is so fascinating. That was one of the most surprising things about the PHD Weight Loss, how I wasn’t hungry throughout. I remember, like you said, the first week, if you get through that first week and you kind of readjust the body, recondition it around this new eating strategy, I just remember it was one of the easiest things. I just was never hungry. It was so fascinating. Besides nutrition and movement, what other factors do you focus on with clients that play a role in getting healthy again?

Well, 80% of any change comes from the mind, so we have to look at the mental, emotional, the habits, behaviors. That’s where these drugs really are falling short. If we just take a drug that’s going to allow our body to drop weight, and by the way, a ton of muscle mass usually comes with the weight when we’re taking these drugs, we haven’t shifted our mindset around food. We haven’t understood how we should be eating to support our unique metabolism. It’s just a matter of time before this weight comes back. Studies show that 70% of the weight comes back within a year after stopping these drugs. So at PHD, I fully understand that it’s more of a mental game, it’s really up in our heads, and we have to understand that aspect of ourselves to be able to keep any weight off for good.

Yeah, can you give everyone a little bit of a peek at how the program works and some of the success stories that stand out? I know you were telling me you were on Mike Gallagher’s show early on today. I know a lot of our listeners listen to Mike, and Mike lost a ton of weight as well because of this program. Do you want to give us a little bit of a peek into how the program works and some of the success stories that stand out?

Sure. Well, the first step is we determine your optimal weight, and the optimal weight for each person is different. We don’t look at BMI, it’s not a good marker of health. We look at body composition, how much fat you are carrying, especially the belly fat, that visceral fat. The visceral fat is active. This belly fat actually secretes hormones that keep you fat. It’s like an entity in and of itself, and it has urges and demands and desires and cravings, and it will not rest until you feed it. So if you only drop a portion of your excess fat weight, it’s just a matter of time until it eats its way back up again.

So the first step is to determine where is that sweet spot, which is what we did for you, Dr. Turley, and made sure that you fully collapsed that belly fat so you weren’t at risk of it all coming back. So that’s the first thing, and that’s really unique, actually. Most programs don’t do that. Then we create a customized meal plan guiding you on exactly what, when, and how much to eat. We take out all of the guesswork, and that’s customized to each person because each person is unique in their needs and tastes. We make sure that you enjoy what you’re eating, that you feel full, that you feel good. Most people sleep better, their joints hurt less just within the first week. It’s crazy. After six weeks, we can reverse a lot of chronic diseases. Sixteen weeks usually is this marker where we can see type 2 diabetes go away and high blood pressure go away. It can happen even sooner than that.

One story, I was just chatting with an OB-GYN, a physician, and he’s been a practicing OB-GYN for 35 years. Working with us, he reversed his type 2 diabetes in six weeks and was completely blown away to the point where he’s totally changed the way that he practices and teaches his perimenopausal and menopausal women how to overcome that belly fat adiposity that happens when we have those hormonal shifts. That is just huge, and he can’t believe that he wasn’t taught this in medical school.

So the food is a big thing, and then we look at the mental, emotional habits, behaviors. We have weekly coaching. We like to provide a lot of the food for no additional cost just to help with baby steps. Dinner is always your responsibility, but we help guide you so you can dine out and take out and do what you need to do there with your food. Then as we go and with the weekly coaching, we gradually release our food so you become totally self-sufficient. For a lot of people, weight loss is an addiction recovery process, so we tackle that as well. Then you hit maintenance, and we have a big alumni community where we support you in maintaining the weight you’ve dropped because dropping weight is one thing, maintaining it is a whole other aspect. So that’s really what we focus on is the maintenance plan.

Yeah, going back and looking at all the times I tried to lose weight, I remember trying to pin why it would go for a couple of months and then come all back, and why it always failed. For me, I thought I just didn’t have a mentor, I didn’t have a counselor

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